Oh what a year!

Sunday, February 03, 2013

I have to say that this has been a pretty crappy year in many ways. Actually - it's been a crappy couple of years.

Back in July of 2012 I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. It was devestating to me. I think I always thought that it wouldn't happen to me - even though I was well on the path. Even though it runs rampant in my family. I think I just figured that once the "real" warning signs came - I would have time to fix it. My diagnosis came completely unexpectedly. I was having problems with my blood pressure and when they ran tests - there it was...! And if I am being completely honest.. the signs were right there - all along. I don't know how I ignored them - and KICK myself for the damage that I have done by turning a blind eye.

One of the things I dealt with during the initial couple of months was depression. I wanted to give up and get rid of my broken / damaged body. I don't think anyone really understood just how upset I was, and certainly not my husband or daughter. They felt I should be able to just change my diet, get some excercise and I would be fine. I kept thinking the phone would ring and the doctor would tell me that my blood tests were mixed up with someone else and that I really didn't have it. In fact I would not settle for hearing anything else. .. The entire time this was going on - I really hadn't dealt with what it meant to my life. I had made a couple of changes - but there were (and probably still are) many I wasn't. I was still drinking regular pop daily. I was not excercising.... but I was slowly starting to wrap my head around my new reality. And then....

October 1st.
My Husband, my daughter and myself went out for chinese food. We had a nice evening - I watched what I ate while the two of them chowed down on my most FAV food like crazy. When we got home (about two hours or so after) my daughter asked me to check her Blood sugar out of curiosity. ** I should add here that my husband and daughter used to get quite the kick out of checking their sugars and seeing how well their body tolerated foods compared to mine. Anyways - I checked my daughter's and got a "too high" error. We checked again - same thing. Checked mine - it was normal. Checked hers again.. too high. I called the Health line and explained what had happend and was told to hang up and get her to emergency.

My Daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at about 10pm that night. Her blood sugar was 52, and she was borderline going into ketoacidosis.

OMG! How on earth could I ever have been so upset about my own diagnosis when my daughter is now going to have to deal with this forever. She is going to have to give herself injections of insulin FOREVER... and while I can say screw it - and have a night where I don't properly eat - she can NEVER have a day off.. not even just one. Ask me how selfish/guilty I felt and still feel about that.

She stayed in the hospital for 4 days. We all took the education and prepared ourselves as much as we could for our new way of life. We tried to deal with the shock of our daughter being diagnosed with a long term illness. Something clicked though. Suddenly it was imperative that we do things right. My daughter needed to measure everthing - I was going to measure everything. If my daughter's life was going to be affected with change - then the least I could do is make some changes also.

It has been a rollercoaster since then. There have been some highs.. but the lows have been really low too. There have been some great successes - and some down right hard challenges. Sometimes I honestly feel like I found out about my diabetes just in time to help Kaitlyn find out about hers - and she found out about hers just in time to help me make the more of the changes I needed to with mine.

My family us full of diabetics and when I was pregnant with my son had gestional but was lucky it went away after his birth. However I have two grandmothers, mother and aunt all with diabetes. May you finding out you had diabeties gave you the opportunity to learn more and be better able to help your daughter. I have a close friend whose son has a insulin pump. The family all went to classes to learn more about it and how to manage it. The good thing is now you both can do it together keeping each other in check in your new lifestyle. Some people chose dietary styles such as vegan or vegeterain and I think I could never do that. This is kind of like that except it is a new dietary lifestyle there can not be any stopping from. 2013 will be a year of new things for your family and it may end up being a year of a new and healthy family lifestyle.